It’s taken me a few days to figure out what I want to say about XC National Championships last week. It was a long week, and I’m still tired.

Four races in six days.
Two volunteer shifts.
One trail tour.
One pool party.
One full week of work.

And the thing is, all of that is NOTHING compared to the time and effort and energy and WORK that hundreds of staff and volunteers put in to make last week possible. I cannot thank them enough.

Because what I got to experience as a racer last week is nothing short of incredible.

I already covered the XCM here. That was on Sunday and started the week off on a high, but also highly-fatigued note.

On Thursday night, I had the privilege of getting to line up for elite short track (XCC) at Elmwood Park. For those of you not local, Elmwood Park is a small park with an amphitheater right in the heart of downtown Roanoke. Racing here, with hundreds of spectators lining the course, ranks alongside racing World Cup XCO at Snowshoe and the Iceman finish as one of the best vibes in mountain bikes that I’ve experienced. So. Freaking. Cool.

My coach and I decided, however, that XCC was not my target race for this week, so my instructions were to go hard for no more than two laps, then to sit up and get myself pulled. Which is exactly what I did. I pushed relatively hard for the first lap, then sat up and easy pedaled the next three laps before getting pulled. In some ways, it was fun to just enjoy the cheers and the vibes, while on the other hand, it was so, so hard to not want to push harder and actually “race.”

But my eyes were on Friday.

Friday afternoon was the singlespeed cross-country (XCO) race at Explore Park. I had initially registered for singlespeed “just for fun,” but early in the week, realized that it was just me and one other racer, which meant I had a 50-50 chance of taking home a national championship, making the “for fun” race also the target race for the week.

However, when I rode downtown for the short track race on Thursday, I somehow broke a spoke in my rear wheel. We taped it for the short track race, and I managed to race and get home without puncturing my rim tape and flatting–but by time I was home, my rear wheel was very out of true and crooked enough it was nearly rubbing my frame. So in addition to swapping my bike from geared to singlespeed Thursday night, I also had to get my spoke replaced. Thankfully, two local mechanics who were helping with neutral support volunteered to help me out, so I stripped down my wheel and arranged to drive the bike, wheel, spare spokes, tire, insert, and sealant out to them at 6 a.m. Friday morning so that the spoke could be replaced prior to my race in the afternoon.

Lining up for what was only my second singlespeed race ever, on a gear ratio I’d never ridden, on a course I had only partially pre-ridden once, for a national championship race where I actually had a chance of winning was incredibly nerve-wracking. I don’t normally get nervous before races, but I was nervous before this one. Still, in the end, I knew that all I had to do was ride my bike.

The race was shortened by a lap due to wildfire smoke in the area, but I don’t know if I could have done another lap. I had passed my competitor partway through the prologue and just kept on pushing from there, going to the point of nearly vomiting, letting up briefly, and then pushing hard again. When I came through the finish line, I was only able to hold my hands up for a few seconds before collapsing over my handlebars in complete exhaustion. I think I poured nine bottles of water on myself just trying to get my body temperature down after the finish!

Saturday morning, I woke up early so that I could switch my bike back to gears for the final race of the week: elite XCO. I showed up at Explore Park, but was so tired from racing the day before, I struggled to even summon the energy to want to race. Due to my own poor judgement in leaving the smaller chainring on my bike from racing singlespeed, I got dropped spectacularly on the flat greenway start, totally spun out and unable to pedal fast or hard enough to keep up with the field. From there, I blew up completely. The ~3 mile prologue felt like the hardest thing I had ever done, to the point of asking the UCI official when I passed him if it was possible to get pulled before even starting lap one. (It wasn’t). And, on race four of the week, I finally reached the point where I was completely over racing uphill, and frustrated at my inability to make my legs propel me with anything even slightly resembling speed (and to be totally honest, I was so tired that even my descending was sloppy).

I did manage to settle into a steady diesel pace on the first full lap, and was actually feeling significantly better than the prologue–even if I was solo at the back. But still, I didn’t have the energy to try and push to avoid getting pulled, and was content to leave the course after just a lap and a half, having “finished” four races.

The results for the week look decent, with two top tens, and a win in Singlespeed–but only if you don’t realize that the fields were as small as they were. I was a part of more than one conversation throughout the week about why the junior women’s fields are so strong (over 75 riders in some age groups!) and so, so small in the masters’ and elite fields (we had just 10 riders for elite XCC and XCO). I don’t think there’s one single, simple answer, but I do think that a big part of it is that there is just not support for women (or anyone, really) racing past the collegiate level unless you’re the 1% of racers who is able to break into the World Cup–and that breakthrough seems to always happen at the junior and U23 levels. I don’t know what the solution is, but I do hope that the future of women’s racing includes more women on the start line.

Until then, I’ll just keep showing up–because apparently, sometimes that’s all it takes to win a National Championship.